I slept for 3 hours last night (this morning). last night, Mom saw me looking at Haydn notes and insisted that I try a bottle of Chicken Essence dad received as a teachers' day present from someone in church. I went to sleep at 1am, but I didn't fall asleep until around 3am. I suspect it's because Chicken Essence makes your brain more active and alert, so that's probably why my brain refused to go to sleep.

I enjoyed the teachers' day celebration today. It was well planned. Our classroom had a nice Star Wars look. The lights were switched off and our windows were practically sealed with garbage bags. Imagine the heat... Anyone who walked past might have thought we were carrying out the IPP (In-Place Protection - for gaseous emergencies) exercise. Inside, the classroom was dark and we were just short of oil lamps for a medieval effect. Our classroom can become a Star Wars exhibit. Those who stayed back on Friday to prepare all the decorations really did a good job.

The Star Wars music went well. I wouldn't say all the hours we spent practicing amounted to that moment, but it was the process of preparing that was most memorable for me. It was a fun experience (like listening to the trumpet, clarinets and saxaphones up close for the first time). Good playing, people. I'm glad the teachers enjoyed it. Mrs Seet said, "This is what you get when you put your talents together."

Totoro was... ok... It wasn't the best I thought I could play. I admit I'm a perfectionist when it comes to music. Minus the stress/nervousness of performing, I enjoyed the music.

The game "whose line was it" was funny. It brought back memories of class. If anyone realised, last Friday was our last "normal" school day, and today was the last school-wide event for us. Now it's Prelims ->2 week Intensive revision -> 2 week Study leave -> O levels.

After the party, went for music again. It was the last part of O level composition. For the first time thoughout the entire coursework period, I felt a litle less relaxed. I typed in the rest of the expression markings, changed a few notes and then finalised the composition. Mr T checked through before I had to submit it. Thankfully, he said it sounded alright and had nothing to comment on. He refined the layout and I was done, officially. The next thing I have to worry about - O level music practical, which is, sadly, on Childrens' day.

To any teacher who is secretly reading this, happy teachers' day!

May the force be with you.

It's the time of the year - 7th month ghost festival. There's a getai set up just opposite my condo, at the basketball court across the road. The people are assembled under a tentage that and right in front is a pile of burning incense. While I was doing violin practice, music suddenly started blaring through the very effective sound system. I couldn't close my window because that would mean drowning myself in sweat. The music was so loud and the drum rhythm was very upbeat, which occasionally resulted in Beethoven's Romance suddenly going strangely out of beat. I stopped practice once I hit my 1hr/day quota, without even bothering to overshoot so that I could polish some parts.

Good thing the singers aren't singing too out of tune and the instruments are tuned properly. It's so loud it practically sounds like there's a live concert in my house. I would probably find it more useful if they used traditional Chinese instruments so that I could maybe analyse the music and revise on Chinese music before the prelims. Now, how am I going to get to work with all that noise... It's almost literally 吵死人 (and those still alive).

How is allowing getai at a public basketball court, on a nice Friday night, smack in the middle of housing properties and supported with booming speakers supposed to uphold equality for all religions? In that case, churches can just start giving all the residents a gospel rally right at their doorstep, and Muslims can have their prayers there, etc. Mom says it's a religious exception. Religious exceptions just might as well equate to religious inequality.

I'm not trying to offend anybody who might not share the same point of view, so please, just take it as a chunk of (nonsensical) info which may shed light on another perspective.

The Adventures of Totoro

I was feeling worse today. My head ached, my throat was bad and so was my nose. My ear was also blocked because of all the sniffing. Now I know why there are ENT specialists - because our ears, nose and throat are very closely linked to each other. Typing of ENT, my ear check with that guy is in about 2 weeks. Nowadays, my metronome (electronic) is on full blast and I still find it hard to hear the beat. Last time, adjusting it at that volume managed to at least make my ears throb slightly.

Today, a guy came to teach us about the Kompang (a Malay instrument). And yes, it's kompang, not kampong. It was a very relaxing lesson because we spent most of the time playing the kompangs. My fingers started hurting after a while, probably because they weren't used to undergoing such therapeutic treatment.

After the session ended, Ms P went out for a while to guide him out of the school. That's when the  adventures of Totoro began. Ruri suddenly went to the piano and played the Totoro. Jie Ying quickly joined the duet and I was very pleased at the spontaneous outburst of Totoro. Sarah started pirouetting about the music room and was very engrossed in her self-taught ballet. Ai started dancing too. It was quite hilarious watching them flailing their arms in the air and rotating about their pivots. To my horror, Ai started trying to pull me to my feet and got me to dance along. She was full of determination as she manoeuvred my reluctant arms. It probably looked like she was trying to give an old folk some physiotherapy.

Ms P suddenly opened the door and all the action stopped. Then we did perception exercises before continuing on Totoro in the canteen. This time, Jy agreed to play it upon my request (usually I have to beg her and ruri every Thurs). However, it was on a condition that I allowed her to give me a lift home, so that I wouldn't have to risk dying while on the bus. I do almost anything for Totoro, live performance. So it was a deal, and I got my weekly doze of Totoro. Thanks again, Jy.

Tomorrow, it's Friday! Going to rearrange the Haydn Symphony for the whole music class to play with ruri and jy during Pure Slacking. It's called studying for the O level set piece the practical way. Then we'll play it for Ms P and hopefully not end up giving her a nightmare. While talking with Ruri the other day, we found it a good idea for the sec 4s (in music related CCAs) to play together. Like, arrange something. It's good because at Sec 4, you have the more experienced players and a wide range of instruments. What's more, there's the garden, which is the perfect spot for an outdoor concert. But of course, now's a little too late for such drastic proposals.

Music connects people - an important lesson I learnt in SMSS.

Ever since yesterday, my throat had been feeling bad. I also started getting rather frequent headaches (headaches are rare for me). When I woke up this morning, the throat got worse. I was stunned at my voice. I don't know if it's called a sore throat. Yesterday, my throat felt very dry, so I decided to drink more water. But each time I swallowed, there was this weird, slightly painful feeling around my throat. It's not the type I normally get with a sore throat. It's less painful but rather irritating. I spent the first half of today coughing and the next half sneezing. Each time I coughed, my head hurt. It felt like someone was trying to compress my brain or stuff something under my skull.

While doing violin practice today, Jean suddenly barged into my room. Oh yea, sometimes when I'm doing violin practice and someone suddenly opens the door, I get such a shock my bow literally bounces off the string. I wonder if this is called intense concentration. Anyway, Jean started promoting her calculator and asked me if I wanted to adopt it. She bought a new one because she thought she lost hers. In actual fact, that was a very timely investment. I was reminded of my ageing calculator's frequent breakdowns, so I decided to take in the new one. I'll start using it to get used to it in case my old, white one suddenly slips into brief comas during prelims. I don't think I should start disturbing everyone by bashing up my calculator until it wakes up. That's like public humiliation - on my calculator's part.

I was intending to finish up AM homework, but I left my exercise book in school. I'm the type who can't split a single assignment on different mediums. What is done on exercise book has to be completed there. Ah well. That means I'm quite free tonight.

Prelim practical went rather alright. I didn't play well for the Romance because the pianist was really worrying me. Maybe it's my fault. I don't know. But I have started putting myself strictly on 110 bpm to avoid going anywhere off the beat. I'll just need to tune my internal rhythm for the next 1 month. My fingers were a little frozen in the music room too, so it was hard to grasp each note wholly. It sounds ok on the surface, but to the person playing it and those who can understand, it wasn't that err... comfortable. I don't know how to describe it. On good violin days, whatever I play sounds very perfect and whole. It gives a comfortable feeling for both the arms and the ears. Nvm...

The concert at night wasn't Handel's Messiah. I got a slight shock when I flipped through the program booklet. The choir sang Christian songs/hymns that were arranged very nicely. Some of the choral works were written by Mozart and Schubert. I didn't know they wrote sacred works. A majority of the songs were in Chinese, the others in English or German. Therefore, I suppose most of the people who went were from Chinese churches too. The choir also sang an SATB version of You are my All in All. It was a good arrangement and I liked the use of some of the chords because they added new colour to the music. They sang that in English, since it was the original text language. I prefer the English version of some songs because sometimes, Chinese disrupts the flow of the text's plot. Some imagery and word play just can't be properly translated.

I have this rather brain draining assignment, not from school - from Sunday school. Clcd assigned Jacky, Jethro and I a text. Mine's from Mathew 16:21-35 - the parable of the unmerciful servant. Alright I shouldn't be the one complaining. When asked to choose, those 2 were going, "ladies first", yea so I just anyhow picked one text. Now, I have to start thinking about my mini sermon, and applying all the techniques I learnt on how to interpret the bible. And I have to think in Chinese.

Now, I'm off to watch the Dead Poets Society. My parents are already about a quarter way through.

I've just completed my worship leading script for tomorrow. I never seem to get enough of Chinese. My mom thinks if I hadn't been brought up in a Chinese church, my Chinese would have been superbly terrible by now. I planned my time today very accurately. And yes, this posting time was also planned because I knew I would need a break. The irony of the life of a student is, the better you are at a certain subject, the less time you can allow yourself to indulge in it. I'd be great if I could just do Math all day long, but no. Just look at my English and SS...

I was complaining to Jy today. Yesterday, after music, I took a bus home. It was the 7pm rush hour period and there were many people on the bus, tired from a whole day of work and therefore resulting in a very peaceful busload of sardines. There were 2 SMSS girls boarded the bus and I deduced they were from Sec 2. They were literally pouring out all their friendship issues and telling everyone (who could not help but listen) how terrible their "best" friends were. They were also publicly announcing their long list of enemies they had in school, and what they did to each other whenever their paths crossed. And for example, how they felt that seniors in their CCAs were a bunch of ____ who had some issues with their juniors. Also an important issue: stream politics - how they felt the Express stream looked down on them (the Normal stream).

I was standing about a metre away from them, and they could be heard so clearly. It was obvious that the passengers around me were slightly embarrassed to be hearing such things. It was like some Grouser's Corner where the only people talking were the 2 people who were pretty oblivious to their audience. It made me think so much because I was stuck in that bus for a whole half an hour, standing there and pretending to be as ignorant as them. Sure, I don't have a problem with people complaining and sharing their problems, but please, just not in front of a massive audience who doesn't need to/shouldn't know. And yea, call me a coward for not stopping those 2.

Guess what? It's Friday. Yesterday...

Evangeline: With every second that passes by, most glorious friday draws ever nigh.

Me: (Where did you get that from?)

E: My head. With great longing comes great... rhyming...

E: Thursday's one redeeming quality is that the agony endured though its slow, boring and tedious passing just makes the next day so much better

Tomorrow is another long day. On the bright side, a Hallelujah concert at night (Handel's Messiah), except I hope I don't accidentally fall asleep.

I got a shock when I opened my email today. Mom must have explored new land today. She found Facebook and wanted to add me as a friend.

Me: What?! Since when did you have Facebook?

Mom: Ya... Why? Cannot be your friend arh...

I have added her. But anyway, I don't see how Facebook is of much use other than playing Who has the Biggest Brain when I'm extremely bored to the extent that even walking around the house doesn't help.

Got back O level Chinese results today. I wasn't really prepared to face it. I did better than I expected. But sometimes, seeing other people who are, in reality, much better in Chinese than me, not getting what they hoped for, I feel like I didn't really deserve it. Andrew called while I happened to be in the Hand phone Zone with my phone on. I can almost imagine how shocked he looked when I told him my result. Mom congratulated me with a wide variety of synonyms for "Good job! Well done! Congratulations! You did great!". I smsed nai nai to tell them her the news. The common response between nai nai and mom were, "remember to thank God". And yes, my Chinese really isn't good, but I agree with mom that it was "by God's grace".

In every victory,
let it be said of me,
my source of strength,
my source of hope,
is Christ alone.

Mom and I are strongly convinced that something (wrong) happened to Jean's brain. Whatever happened, it did her some good. -deleted a chunk which Jean claims is censored- She wasn't supposed to be good in Math related subjects. Ah well, I guess spending a lot of time doing questions (and consequently involving the whole household) every night did her some good.

I let my violin teacher listen to Rondo today. She corrected quite a bit and it actually sounded much better. If I want to play well this Saturday, I'm going to have to practice super hard for the next 2 days, and hopefully, nothing catastrophic happens.

I just realised that I've been throwing aside too much time for Star Wars this week. Therefore, I am going to cut down and start completing my homework, and get my mind out of Star Wars.

I'm smiling to myself and I don't know why. Music prelim practical is in 4 days. I suddenly started panicking today for my solo pieces. To make myself feel better, I spent time refining Beethoven's Romance which, sadly, doesn't sound romantic at all. Typing of romanticism, I'm still a little disappointed about the fact that this year's O level composition texts aren't the romantic/emo sort.

Saturday and Sunday had a lot of Rondo in it. I'm glad ms tan came to listen and correct us, because it sounds much better now. I'm starting to enjoy the piece. Ck too! It no longer seems super fast and stressful. At least I can move a bit now, and my fingers won't hate me so much.

Since yesterday, the main theme of Star Wars has been playing in my head at every opportunity. There aren't any downloadable scores online. At the rate at which the torrent loads, Teacher's Day will be over. The only option left was to go by ear. I've been spending almost 10 hours sitting by the computer, glued to the screen and wired up with earphones (to reduce noise pollution). There's a lot of cross referencing to do. After listening to one video, I have to cross check with a few more to make sure the orchestra didn't play it wrongly. Sometimes, the audio at a specific bar isn't good and I can't hear some instruments, so I have to hunt for another video that gives me a clearer sound at that bar. Then, painstakingly type in the notes for the different parts. I've heard the Star Wars title at least a hundred times already. I am pretty sure I dreamt of Star Wars last night.

Tomorrow is O level composition coursework, part 1 after school. I hope my mind doesn't blank out.

Now, back to Star Wars. I think I'm getting a little more addicted to it. I can even sing out the harmony that goes along with the main melody.

On Wednesday, I was doing Rondo intensive. In my attempt to polish the piece, I worked very hard on it for about 30mins at 130 beats/min. To make my point, my fingers were oscillating (moving down then up) 8times/sec. Imagine playing this for (30 x 60) seconds. So you can imagine my bow arm moving at 8Hz, for 30mins. At the end of it, I didn't know why, but the part of my thumb in contact with the bow ached weirdly. That's when I discovered I got myself a blister. It was difficult to bow properly and even my writing was affected.

Then, on Thursday, I was doing violin practice again, but less Rondo intensive since my thumb was slightly injured. At the end of practice, I discovered that a fingernail on my left hand got sliced. As a violinist, my fingernails aren't that long, so the cut went deep enough to expose a nerve. Please forgive my description if it doesn't make sense. It's the type of pain you get when you press the tip of your finger and it hurts. For about half a minute, I just stared at the finger and pondered on the troublesome consequences.

From these 2 musical tragedies that occurred one after the other, I was reminded about how important fingers are to musicians. Despite the unfortunate injuries, I did violin practice today. It was a painful process, and up till now, I still don't know what kept me going. Just imagine how I did vibrato. It was quite bad. My vibratos on my middle finger all sounded constipated and pressing 2 strings using that finger was torturing.

Today was an unusually long Friday because of the Physics CT. So far, SS was the worst. I'm not too worried about AM next Monday. I think I went a bit crazy while doing Math this morning. Vivienne caught me talking to myself, or rather, the question. Also, I need to stop saying "I can see that..." whenever I meet an oral picture.

Rondo-Mozart-jam tomorrow! I hope Ms Tan doesn't faint when she hears Rondo expressivo. I'll collect my ultrasound scan report tomorrow morning. I'll get to see my organs, black and white style!

If you don't have an ulcer in your mouth, please take 3 seconds off now to be thankful. I've been surviving with one on my tongue since yesterday. Talking has been difficult and eating is my worst nightmare. This ulcer seems more deadly than others in my mouth's historical record. It's during times like these that I'm reminded of the important function of my mouth, especially my tongue. Given an option, I'd rather be put on a drip or just starve rather than go through the pain of eating. Sign language would be a bonus.

This week is the dreaded common test week. Actually, compared to prelims coming up in 21 days and O levels in 74 days, these tests are meant for peanuts. So far, SS drained my hopes as usual, but E Math was great. I wish I could just do Math and Science (not bio) every day. It'd also be nice if everyone could talk in numbers and equations without having to be bothered about words and sentences.

On an unrelated note, a blue-black mysteriously appeared on my arm. I don't remember banging my arm anywhere. I discovered it while in the zoo on Monday, but it has only gotten worse. Maybe I was in such a good mood that I forgave (and forgot) whatever banged my arm.

While in my bathroom this afternoon, I suddenly heard someone practicing singing upstairs. She was doing scales and vocal warm ups. I'm quite surprised that there are still people who appreciate classical singing, especially in Singapore. If this singing persists, I may find myself dedicating more of my afternoons to residing in my toilet.

This years NDP was very, very good. Exceeded my expectations. The graphics, plot and music were of considerable quality. There's a common understadning at home that the NDP improved a lot, so there's hope for hosting the Youth Olympics.

There was this part where Barbarella (or something like that) was asking the nonya standing in the East whether she was playing beach volleyball. My goodness... Jean and I looked at each other and burst out laughing. Mom and dad just stared at our sudden outburst and then continued eating. Either they pretended they didn't realise anything, or they really didn't.

But in conclusion, the NDP was very good. It was also very psychologically well-planned. It instilled some patriotism in me. But I'll need to see how long that lasts.

Mom and Jean were watching Singapore Idol just now. There was this woman clutching her stomach like most singers do and singing "take the pain away".

Mom: What? Stomach ache arh...

Hahahaha... ok that's all. I'm going to enjoy my Sunday night.

Happy birthday, Singapore!

I suddenly feel thankful I'm a citizen of Singapore. I'm thankful because Singapore is quite developed, there's peace and I'm living a good life.

Joycelyn, Jy and Ck came over just now. Today's weather wasn't too bad, at least it wasn't so much like a suana. I hope the weather is this good when Ms Tan comes over to "jam" next Saturday.

Almost every National Day is spent having steamboat for dinner with mom, dad and Jean. This year isn't any different. Mom and dad came home with a whole load of food and 1 light bulb. They think there's going to be either war or famine this week. A whole compartment of fruit and vegetables, meat, snacks and 24 packets of Milo.

Now, I'm going off to be patriotic and watch the parade.

I just did research on the definition of the word "birthday". Vivienne, you're right.

birth⋅day

1. the anniversary of a birth.

2. the day of a person's birth.

3. a day marking or commemorating the origin, founding, or beginning of something.

4. the festivities or celebration marking such a day or anniversary.

Origin: 1350–1400

I think I was too fixed on the second definition. I overlooked the first definition. In conclusion, "Happy Xth birthday" still stands and it is both logically and biologically accurate. Sorry, please ignore my unsupported argument in the previous post.

Going to Gleneagles to day brought back memories which I can't remember. It was back to where I was born, and where I visited jean when she was born. Those were the only 2 other occasions I went to Gleneagles.

The ultrasound scan was a pretty interesting experience. They put some gel on my stomach (not the actual stomach, but you get what I mean). Then they used this device that moved on top of my stomach. It was connected to a monitor that showed black and white pictures. When the device moved, it felt ticklish. I nearly wanted to laugh but of course I managed to control it. Just that sometimes, there were jerks in my breathing. The doctor told me when to breathe in an out so that she could take pictures of whatever was inside my body. Ultrasound scanning - an application of sound waves.

The doctor was looking around for mom to explain the results and she got a shock when she saw her because she said mom looked too young. Anyway, they didn't see anything wrong with my liver or bile duct. Therefore, the cause of my raised bilirubin level is still unknown. The GP doc will probably call me some time this week to explain the findings of the scan.

After that, went to attend a wedding and its lunch reception. My uncle Edwin was the emcee. No one ever heard him say such romantic things before, in Chinese. The reason: yx's dad was the one who wrote the script. It runs in the family. Dad also rarely says anything romantic directly. It's usually indirect or through actions.

Then, went to Ashlyn's (latest cousin's) 1st birthday party. It was another buffet lunch, and for most people who attended the wedding, my other uncle's house was the next stop.

Jasmine, jian ling, Jean and I met for xiao zu. It was really a small group cause not everyone in our group could make it. We talked, played and ate for 4 hours. By the time we ended, it was 8.30pm and we were all tired. So we dropped by for dinner together before going home. Oh we played bridge. Jean learnt the game quite fast. Faster than me.

In short, today was another nice day. Tomorrow's National Day!

I have a problem with "Happy X Birthday", where X refers to the number of years after your birthday has passed.

When I say, "Happy 16th Birthday!", I can't say it without thinking hard after that. How is it for someone to have a birthday 16 times? All of us were born once, and for Christians, a second birthday may be commemorated when you decide to become a Christian. That's what it means when someone is "born again". But where do the other 14 times come from? We don't repeat our birth 16 times in 16 years of our life, so it isn't logical to say, "It's my 16th birthday!"

Since everyone has only been given birth to once, that means our birthday should be a single day of a single month of a single year. Following this logic, wouldn't it be disturbing to say, "It's my birthday today!"? In the first place, for most cases, you weren't born today, and your birthday was ages ago.

All this seems so illogical to me, and even biologically misleading. However, I must admit that I haven't thought of anything better to say. Therefore, I apologise that whatever I've been typing is more of a critique than constructive thought.

The house sounds like it's being invaded. I'm half watching Transformers. Only half the population (Jean and dad) know how to appreciate the movie. They're already smiling and laughing before I get the whole joke. Mom gave up watching. I only find the music interesting. *Insert rant on how fascinated I am about composers knowing how to fit the incidental music into the movie action so well*

My Sleepless Adventure

I'm alive. I've been awake or without proper sleep since 6am yesterday (Thursday). Last night, I embarked on my night adventure with Evangeline. At 11pm, I was seated at my desk and ready to brave the night life. I kept the room light on throughout the night so that my cells would think it was day and hence not ask my brain to shut down. Within the 7 hours I had, I managed to cover 4 subjects. It was really surprising how fast time flew. The whole "night" seemed to be over very fast. Smsing Jy's phone every hour was something I looked forward to because it helped me to countdown to breakfast.

For the first few hours, I was tired and wanted to go sleep, but I forced myself not too. After a while, the tiredness subsided. I happened to be doing A Math Geometrical Proofs and I found myself canceling and rewriting my working over and over again. I kept reading questions wrongly and proved the wrong triangles and sides a few times. In conclusion, A Math is unsuitable for working on at that hour, unless you're an owl or a bat.

The good thing about doing work during sleeping time is that there are no distractions. I managed to stay relatively focused for the 7 hours.

After the first few hours of overcoming tiredness, hunger starts to set in. I was getting quite hungry but breakfast was still about 3 hours away. I don't know much about bio, but I think it's because the body needs more energy when you stay awake compared to resting. Probably my stomach is just weird. Evangeline ate so little for dinner but she didn't even feel hungry.

At the crack of dawn, Evangeline and I took a 15-20 minute power nap before our actual waking time (5 and 6am respectively). I found it hard to fall asleep because I was so exhausted that breathing was tiring. I found myself breathing more than usual. Also, my room was so cold I found it hard to warm up my bed within the short amount of time before I could finally knock off. Therefore, sleep quality was low.

Today, National Day was celebrated in school. I was enthusiastic enough to wear red and white. Again, it has to do with aging and retiring. To be accurate, I felt tired but not sleepy. Upon reaching class, Audrey gave me some sweet to eat so that I could boost up on sugar. She was worried I'd faint during the parade/ceremony later. Evangeline also recieved her dose of sugar. Anyway, I survived the flag raising. I nearly fainted during the National Day celebration 2 years ago. By the time I wanted to faint, I had to walk back to class. I must have looked like some drunkard. For the record, I fainted twice in Lower Sec during normal flag raising and Ellie was always the poor person who had to catch me when I fell backwards. Blame Thalasaemia minor.The only reason why I don't have to faint nowadays is because they abolished standing during devotions.

I will sleep at 11pm tonight. That means I would have awake for nearly 41 hours in 2 days. I hope I don't pass out. It's bad for health, but I don't think I'm ever going to get a chance to do this again.

Tomorrow is the liver scan day. No food till 11.30am. On the bright side, a wedding lunch buffet should be able to compensate.

Today was a nice day. O level music has just begun. However, as promised, I shall not think about the composition until Sunday. It's good to know that there are others in class who also have a heart, or rather, conscience.

We went through the prelim compositions from last week. It was quite amusing, especially Ruri's. Hers always has that personal touch that makes the whole class (including the teacher(s)) end up laughing. She was the only one in class who picked the poem - Kopitiam. I could never imagine singing "Ah Peh" to a tune, not until this afternoon. The whole composition was able to bring out Singlish effectively. Apart from her semibreve trill (for the poor singer) and other rather funny errors, it was good work, and very Ruri.

Ms P and Mr Tan were commenting on my coursework. Mr T was trying to say that my piano accompaniment on the left hand was a little heavy and had too many open fifths. Ms P said it was probably because I could only play the violin and not the piano (except TTLS), which explained the weird left hand part. The difference between a violin and piano is that the violin only has one melodic line, if not, it's called double stops.

Ms P: Lynn thinks too linearly

Jy: Lynn thinks too lynnearly

This reminds me of Vivienne's joke.

What did Lynn say?

Ans: Lynn-say Lohan (Lindsay Lohan)

Oh here's another lame on by Ms P.

Why will there never be a lack of Math teachers?

Ans: Because they multiply

Evangeline and I are planning to stay up all the way till tomorrow morning. That means going without sleep. I'm going to occupy myself with an intensive 6 hour revision, provided I survive the whole night. I'm supposed to sms Jy every hour so I can prove that I was awake. E will sms Audrey. Then tomorrow morning, we'll see who survives the longest at school. We have compared our diets to ensure a fair test. Good thing there won't be lessons tomorrow, so it's the safest day to do this. I really hope I don't faint and die in the parade ground.

I am regretting now. I regret wanting to know the O level music text ahead of the schedule. I regretted it after Natalie called, and I'm thankful she did. Immediately after the call, I knew I was wrong. But I didn't want to accept it and tried to run away from that mistake. So I read the news, it didn't matter if it was about some boring politics - I just wanted to get my mind off it. After a while, I knew I couldn't keep avoiding it. I knew that it was beyond my morality and my Christian stand. I couldn't bear the thought of looking at my Music grade while knowing that it wasn't clean. There's nothing I can do to make time turn back, but at least I can learn from this mistake. I decided that since I knew the text 3 days before, I'll wait till 3 days after the planned date (Sunday) before I start working on my composition. I'll also memorise one of the texts on Thursday. It's not going to make up for everything, but at least I'll learn from this self-imposed penalty.

"Whatever is popular isn't always right, and whatever is right isn't always popular." I thought it was acceptable since so many students were already using unscrupulous methods of doing their composition, but I've just learnt otherwise.

I collected the medical report today. So now I have some official document to prove that I have Beta Thalsaemia. Not like it's going to change my life from what it already is... And anyway it was kind of suspected because it's genetic - my great grandmother, grandfather, dad, his bro and jean have it. There are disadvantages to it:

1. For Thalasaemia minor patient who marries someone else with that condition and decides to have a child, the child will have a 25% chance of getting Thalasaemia Major, which is fatal.

2. Blood count will always be less than normal, and no amount of iron supplements is going to work.

This morning..

Viv: Hey lynn your eyes are a bit red leh.. you cried just now right?

Me: No! My eyes aren't red and I didn't cry

E: Yea, lynn.. (blah blah blah...) see, you're going red...

Chan: Aww.. who dumped you?

Jy: lynn, don't cry

Chan: Yea there are plenty of other guys out there

And a whole 10 minutes was just spent trying to defend myself, which was later translated to covering up a "fact" that I cried. It died down for a few hours, then after 3 periods of Geog, I was tired and put my head on the table to rest. Ok you can guess what happened next.

O level Music students are a bunch of shrewed musicians. There's a secret operation being carried out, but it's not like other students around Singapore don't do it, and teachers pretend not to know ("just don't tell me!"). It saves brain cells and about 3 days of our time. 3 days doesn't seem like much of a difference when it comes to composition, but considering the fact that next week is common test week, 3 days means a lot for O levels. I have a feeling only a handful of people know what I'm typing about. Ai and ruri's reactions were highly amusing.

Just now..

Me: Wow.. Porridge. I was hoping for some emo romantic one

Jy: Haha. Sorry, nothing emo or romantic this year. Oh no lynn. The reason why you want to write emo romantic music has something to do with what Chan said right? Don't cry!

My goodness. I nearly dropped my bow while reading that sms (I was doing violin practice). Anyway, jy owes me 5 times of Totoro tomorrow.

BBC posted a report on NASA's Endeavor which just touched down. Read it here, and watch the video. I got a little excited at first because it looked very familiar. Dad got the Tamiya model of the space shuttle for me to build last year. Of course, I didn't have the skill to make it look professional and my painting is erm... but this is what it looks like. I think Tamiya really copied the actual shuttle really well. I wonder how they get all the measurements for all their models.

Today, Natalie, Ai, Ruri and I went for lunch with ms tan. Talked about stuff from strings - before and now, to school, teachers to fats, lipids and the interesting music lessons. It's rare to have a teacher like her. Ruri started crying halfway and teared as she ate her pizza. It got us worried at first, but it was over in a while.

My ultrasound scan is next Saturday morning at Gleneagles. The liver - something I don't learn in Physics. Thanks again, Natalie, for the reminder to trust God.